Kindred Strangers
by Wheel of Fish
Summary: It was only fitting that the pair of gentle expatriates should gravitate toward each other. It was more a question of what their conviction could withstand. Prompt-based oneshot.


A/N: I'm taking ship requests over on Tumblr as my Christmas gift to phans who don't see enough of their desired content. :) User madiamazing has begged me to write Christine/daroga, so...here goes!

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When he first saw the pretty chorus girl, it was by happenstance that he was in the same underused passageway at the opera house. She was in costume and had been backed into a wall, trapped beneath the murmuring sweet talk of one M. Duval, a silver-haired Opera patron whom the Persian knew to have a wife and six children. She was quiet but close to tears.

"Ah, there you are, mademoiselle!" he called out. "I believe that you are needed backstage."

M. Duval backed up and slunk away, while the Persian offered to escort the young lady to her destination. He waved away her profuse expressions of gratitude (she was new, she explained, and had gotten lost on the way to rehearsal), and they exchanged pleasantries en route to the stage. There was something soft but sad about her. When they parted ways and she smiled at him, he saw in her a sort of willful optimism: a belief in goodness above all else, perhaps despite evidence to the contrary.

He saw a hint of something else, too, and he wanted to call it warm fondness—but that was likely wishful thinking.

The next time they met, it was after a performance. His gaze had scarcely left the chorus for the duration: she sang with such bright-eyed enthusiasm, and he had found himself entranced by the movements of her mouth, the way her lips could be round and pillowy one second, wide and expressive the next.

He had not planned to approach her, just as he never interacted with the other performers; he was merely a silent observer of the arts. But he found himself lingering afterward, perhaps in hopes of a glimpse, and she appeared. She was on him in an instant, all warm smiles and glittering blue eyes. It could be so competitive among the rest of the company, she said, and she did not yet know whom she could trust, but she knew that she at least had an ally in him.

It was out of sympathy, he told himself, that he invited her to meet up for tea. It was the least he could do, to ease the transition for her. She seemed eager to learn of his Persian origins, and he soon discovered why: she was a transplant herself, from Sweden.

"It feels as though I have left a piece of myself behind," he confessed at length, "and it has rendered me uneven, so that I can never fit cleanly into this new life."

Her eyes widened, and she inhaled sharply. "Yes," she said. "Yes, that's exactly how it is." She reached across the table and squeezed his hand, a smile playing at her lips.

Without even thinking, he shifted to wrap his fingers around hers. Oh, how small and delicate they were, and how soft! His own hand was rough by comparison, but it was warm, and it blanketed hers entirely. She did not flinch or pull back. In the handful of seconds that followed, something unspoken passed between them, and his heart swelled and burned hot in his breast.

Their run-ins began to increase in frequency, their interactions becoming lighter, softer. She teased him about his underhanded authority, the way he needed to see everything done to his satisfaction without asserting himself as a leader. He, in turn, gently poked fun at her naiveté, her childish optimism. She took it all in stride, until one night after a particularly difficult rehearsal, when La Carlotta had torn into the girl for interfering with her blocking.

"And I suppose she should still be given the benefit of the doubt?" he asked slyly. "Perhaps she is just misunderstood, as you are fond of saying? Come now; you cannot keep letting others walk all over you."

His teasing smile disappeared when her eyes began to water. Even as her lips quivered, she drew closer, standing erect and defiant before him. "I maintain such an outlook," she bit out, "because I cannot conceive of a world that runs on bitterness and defeatism. And if I do not do it, then who will? You?"

His lips parted. He stared down at her ice-blue eyes, her flushed skin, her tiny balled fists, and for a moment stopped breathing entirely. His hand reached for the side of her head, dark against her flaxen hair as his fingers wove between the locks. Her eyelids fluttered shut, and she leaned into his palm.

"I apologize," he said quietly. "I would not have you change in the slightest. Your outlook is...laudable." _Laudable_ : an understatement, if there ever was one. But he could not give voice to the desperate warmth clawing at his chest, and instead he touched his lips to her forehead, briefly and feather-light. She released a tiny sigh as he pulled away.

He took a small bouquet to her dressing-room before her next show, his heart beating in triplicate when he heard her call out, "One moment, please!" There was something odd about her voice, though: something strained. She opened the door a crack, and it took only a glance at her pursed lips, her tense and anxious posture—dare he say she was even leaning _away_ from him?—for him to realize that something had shifted.

"I am terribly sorry, but I cannot see you anymore," she told him. Her eyes were tinged red, as though she'd been crying. "I must focus on my singing, you see, and cannot afford such...distractions." He opened his mouth to question, or to object, and she raised a hand to stop him. "If you care for me at all, monsieur, you will respect my wishes and keep your distance." Then she softly closed the door, leaving him to gape in the hallway.

He did not want to upset her further, and so he did as was requested of him, save for the single letter that he sent to express his dejection and concern. When it went unanswered, he called upon the one man who knew more about the Opera goings-on than anybody else.

There in the little house on the lake beneath the Opera, he visited with the Opera Ghost. "Tell me, Erik, what do you know of the Swedish soprano?" he asked.

At this, Erik's yellow eyes glittered. "Oh, she is my pupil, daroga! Mark my words, she is to be the best singer the Paris Opera has ever seen." He may as well have socked the Persian in the stomach.

"Your...pupil?"

"Yes, yes, I visit her at her dressing-room mirror and teach her to sing. She believes me an angel, you know! An angel of music! And as such, I have instructed her to forego all suitors, and she has agreed! Don't you see, daroga, how much she wishes to please me?"

He went light-headed; the room began to blur. His voice came out hoarse. "Why?"

"Oh, daroga, she is such a good girl, a lovely girl. And I believe that she will come to love me, if she knows my voice first, knows how good and gentle I can be, and then she shall never need to look upon my face."

"Oh, Erik," he whispered, but the man was too caught up in his own fantastical thoughts to hear him.

He was still puzzling over what to do when the handsome vicomte came into play. He did not hate the boy, as he was sure Erik must, but he was frustrated at the least. He told himself that it was because the boy's overt affections for the girl would put the couple at risk. And though he would turn out to be correct, it still ate away at his mind, at his conscience: Had he surrendered too easily? Should he have expressed himself as ardently as the boy had?

As to why he risked his own life to help them, once Erik plummeted swiftly into madness: well, it was what any good man with a moral compass would do. He told himself this as he descended into the bowels of the opera house with the boy, gun loaded, prepared to end the life of his oldest friend if it ensured her safety.

After it all—after he nearly perished (twice); after she sacrificed her own happiness for his life and the boy's (his own only by proxy, he suspected); after he lost consciousness to wake in his flat the following day; after Erik turned up, saying he'd sent the couple off to be wed posthaste, detailing his plans to die—the Persian's body felt so, so heavy. He poured himself some tea and sat and stared into the cup, not drinking, until the liquid went cold. The sun filtered in through the window, casting shadows that slowly traversed the room as he sat.

It was twilight when there came a knock at his door. He thought perhaps he'd imagined it, and he blinked moisture back into his dry eyes. Another knock. He rose to answer.

"Hello," she greeted him breathlessly. Her blonde hair was disheveled, her pale-blue dress rumpled, but both brought out her eyes with such stunning and heart-wrenching beauty. He could scarcely summon the words to invite her in.

They stood face-to-face in his sitting-room, alternating which of them opened their mouth to speak only to wordlessly close it again. Finally, he said, "You and the vicomte…are wed?"

She shook her head. "I had to know," she said. "I had to see for myself that you were all right." She choked on the last few words, her lips trembling, and his heart disintegrated all over again.

"I am," he replied, "thanks to you." His broad palm reached up, unbidden, to cup her face. It was as soft and delicate as he'd always imagined it would be. Was it wishful thinking, or did she lean into his hand as she had once upon a time, seemingly so long ago?

He came to his senses, appalled and embarrassed by his sudden impropriety. But when he moved to withdraw his hand, she covered it with her own and held it fast against her cheek. Her eyes pleaded with him.

"Oh, Christine." If he whispered her name aloud, would that make her real? " _Christine_."

The distance closed between them as the room in his periphery melted away, and his lips found hers and they were dry and soft and perfect and he pressed into them a little bit harder, needing to confirm that she was real and solid. His hand wound itself into her hair, anchoring her so that he could change his angle and come sweeping at her bottom lip with his own.

She made a small noise, a combination of whimper and cry, and he pulled back. There were tears now. There were tears, but she was smiling, and she slid her arms around him and lay her head against his shoulder. He held her tightly, and they wept together.


End file.
